Monday, January 21, 2019

End of July

The kids were troopers for the long car ride home from Utah, but they apparently had some excess energy stored up when we got back because Kelly, B, and Sammy spent FIVE HOURS rolling around wrestling together the next morning.

I took the little boys to run an errand, and we saw a sign for a British car show at St. Edward State Park on the way back. They weren't as impressed with the delorean as I was, but they loved the miniature trucks.

A lot of time was spent excavating a giant pit under the trampoline and filling it with water. The positive of this: no weeds are ever going to grow there. The negative: nothing will ever grow there. I'm glad they had fun.

Since no one wanted to get back in the car again for a while unless it was absolutely necessary, we made short trips to our neighborhood park.

During piano lessons, Sister Nielsen let the kids get the skateboards out of the storage shed. I'm pretty sure that sliding around on their bellies is the only way these boys ever thought to use them. Dorothy was there at the same time as us pulling weeds for money. Eventually the skateboards were abandoned because absolutely everyone thought pulling weeds as a group was more fun. How do I get them to start a spontaneous weed pulling party in my yard?

We went to Saltwater Park in Shoreline. The sound was as icy as ever, but that doesn't stop these water lovers.

Kelly spent ages trying to ride this piece of driftwood.

Kelly can come stay with us anytime if he will read to B and Sammy. They have a voracious appetite for books and friends.

We went blueberry picking in North Bend with the Blackwelders.

We hit the sprinkler park again.

Kelly left us to stay with another friend for a week, but they met us at Bellevue Downtown Park to play in the water and ease our separation.

You may have noticed that Sammy is not often wearing pants in our summer pictures. This was our summer of potty training (after our winter and spring of potty training. Potty training is sloooooow). Since this baby is not a baby anymore, I decided to stop putting off some of the house projects that were tough to tackle with babies in the house.

After balancing a ladder precariously on the stairs so that I could tape the ceiling, we painted our stairs wall. Previously the wall had been painted white, but badly, so that you could see that it used to be blue. Since we moved in I have wanted to make it into a bright accent wall.

So we did it! Our house is finally starting to be what we planned when we moved in. We got new carpet, pulled out the icky blue carpet in the living room to expose the hardwood floor, and painted my accent wall.

The Carvers moved into a neighborhood with a community pool, and they invited us to come swim with them. We had a great time, but I am SOOOOO ready for Sammy to be done toilet training. I don't know if he has ever met a pool or bathtub that he didn't poop in. It was pretty embarrassing when the wading pool had to be closed, especially since there were only a few families there, and it was pretty obvious who was responsible. Yuck.

I love all of Sammy's squishy babyhood, but nine years of changing diapers, bleaching tubs, evacuating pools, washing diapers, and wiping bottoms has me looking forward to diaper free days.